Shimmer - To Be As One
ATI special...kind of...my ordeals with ATI cards continue...8500/9500/9800
The title of this episode is
self explanatory.
Yep. Plain and simple, me and ATI have started on the wrong foot.
Back in '99 I bought a mighty Celeron A 366MHz and a 440BX motherboard model MSI-6154. The system came with an
ATI Rage II C 4MB graphic card. Soon after I received my PC I saw how weak the RAGE II C was. I had a small budget and I didnt want to buy a K6-2 no matter what. Pentium II/III or a K7 were out of discussion. A year later, on my birthday I bought an
ACorp nVIDIA VANTA 8MB and THAT was everything I wanted.
Carmagheddon ran like a dream!
The differences between ATI RAGE II C and VANTA were like night and day. That was the first moment I really tasted what meant to have a 3D accelerator. It was
AS GOOD AS IT GETS!. I will never forget that
VANTA. A few years back I recovered my card from my cousin and now it sits in her box together with her sisters
As you probably have already noticed, you wont see too many ATI cards in my collection. Also they do not pop up at the flea market very often. This is why when I find them I buy them without having second thoughts.
After the ATI Rage II C moment I never bought an ATI card until this day. In the future I might be tempted to try an ATI, who knows. My bias toward nVIDIA cards and the cycle at which I purchased graphic cards, made that I only bought nVIDIA.
Cirrus Logic-ATI-nVIDIA-nVIDIA-nVIDIA-nVIDIA-nVIDIA-nVIDIA-nVIDIA.
The three cards I'm about to present are the result of three separate visits I took at the flea market this year.
1. Ati Radeon All-In-Wonder
8500DV 64MB
2. Ati Radeon
9500 64 MB - PN 109-94200-30
3. Ati Radeon
9800 PRO 256MB - PN 109-A09400-00
Ati Radeon All-In-Wonder 8500DV 64MB
This beauty caught my eye as soon as I noticed it. I lifted her from the rag it was sitting on and I inspected her thoroughly. It was impecable and for a very low price
it was mine! . "Lucky" flea market find....yeah my A$$...pfffffttt...
At that moment I was 99.9999999% sure that it was working.
What could possibly go wrong? such a nice and clean graphic card. A dumpster find usually isnt that clean.
I decided to clean only the heatsink and the fan and tidy up the PCB with a soft dry brush and a few cotton sticks dipped in isopropyl alcohol 99%. I wanted to preserve the markings on the top of the capacitors for the sake of authenticity.
The heatsink was held in place with thermal glue. BIG DISAPPOINTMENT!
After I cleaned the card I powered it up and I waited anxiously for the happy boot beep and a clear image.
...
The unthinkable became reality in just a few seconds. Check out those cool artefacts on the mighty 20" LCD. A+++
To make matters worse a burnt smell came from the area of the graphic chip ...
the card still worked though...
Nothing more to add. Another one for the section of deceased cards.
gallery:
https://postimg.cc/gallery/1ktsn7ows/
gallery 2:
8500 AIW
Ati Radeon 9500 64 MB - PN 109-94200-30
I found this red card tossed in a dirty suitcase. Intially my pulse spiked as I thought it was a faster card but the label on the back soon brought me down to EARTH.
9500 NON PRO 64MB.
I placed it back in the suitcase and went away. Not long after that, I was back and bought it for a very low price. After I paid for the card, I had a feeling like the one you have when you buy something that in fact you dont want
Obviously, higher forces were playing with me and were telling me to buy it
. In the end it seems they were right after all...
The card was cleaned well. The testing session went smoothly. On the PIII-800 the card couldnt stretch its legs but the most important thing is that it is alive and kicking.
gallery:
https://postimg.cc/gallery/3bisokan0/
gallery 2:
9500 NP 64MB
Ati Radeon 9800 PRO 256MB - PN 109-A09400-00
I honestly dont know what I was thinking when I bought this card
. I was
attracted by the size, the silver heatsinks and the RED PCB of the damn thing.
I checked her for a while and
I placed it back on the stand.
It was in a horrible state. Dirty, scratched, a capacitor was hanging for dear life, the heatsinks had bent fins, the fan was missing, ... in short: DO NOT BUY!
The only clean part was the area where the missing fan stood. I still wonder why people take the fans off electronics especially the ones with a proprietary design. MAN is a strange beast. This fact reminded me of the case of the motherboards I bought which were stripped of jumpers. What could you possibly do with a bag of jumpers???!!!
While I browsed the wares at the flea market I still thought of the BIG RED CARD. In the end I haggled a bit and bought it for a very low price.
So it was mine.
Like glue BO$$!
Look at it!
terrible, terrible, terrible
I used
a dry soft brush to remove much of the dirt from the surface. I was very gentle with the card.
Next I tackled the cooling of the card. The BIG problem was the missing fan.
The asymmetric holes where the original fan stood, already signaled the difficulties ahead. I scratched my head
and I wondered how am I going to solve this ...
The heatsink
was loose and after I removed it I saw the bent push-pins.
I washed
the heatsink well and I straightened all the fins.
I didnt have
a replacement for the missing fan so I started searching in my cooling BOX-O-PARTS. I stopped at a
DeepCool V50 but I soon realised I couldnt use it as the original heatsink had a rised area that made contact with the die of the graphic chip. The flat V50 was of no use to me. I tried other coolers but to no avail. I didnt want to remove the silver frame from the graphic chip.
Hmmmm...
it looks like I'm stuck with you...
I looked for a fan...and nothing fit.
In the end I decided to use
THE LEGEND
At a first look it fit the bill. Silent and stronger than the original fan. It fitted with almost no room to spare.
I wanted to attach it with just a screw and this was a fail. Like i didnt know that...
Still searching for solutions I came up with the idea of
"a frame" on which I can attach the fan and I wanted to make it from a sheet of aluminium. This would've involved too much work so I looked for alternatives.
I remembered I had a few
sheets of thin textolite. BINGO!
To save time I wanted to make the frame
in a triangle shape but that would've reduced the cooling capacity of the heatsink as the airflow woulnd't've reach the area under the fan. In the end I took the difficult path and I made
three textolite extensions.
My first try was about 90% of what I wanted.
My second attempt was a WIN.
I searched for
black screws and I used
a black marker to conceal the "scaffolding".
The tolerances were small but in the end I prevailed.
A JOB WELL DONE!!!
I returned the push-pins to their original shape. I used a pair of pliers and a couple of small pieces of textolite. I inserted the textolite at the base of the push-pins and with the pliers I clamped the tip. The brass was cooperative and I saved the push-pins
I soldered the capacitor, I used some Arctic MX-4 thermal paste and
the card was ready for its test. (The capacitor had bent feet so I decided to attach it as well as I could for the testing session and after a successful run I was going to remove it and do a proper job.)
On the first power-up the fan wasnt running. WTH?!?!? The fan header was flipped. I put it in the correct position and the fan sprung to life.
Unfortunately the 9800 gave
no signal on the ABIT SA6 and on the the i850 I received the beep code for
VGA NOT DETECTED...
I tried to use a
PCI video card and rewrite the BIOS-ul of the 9800. The PC refused to ouput a video signal on the PCI card when the ATI was used.
Not good...
Hmmmmmm..............
VGA NOT DETECTED? What if this is a case of a corrupt BIOS like the V4-L?
I searched for the BIOS chip and I soon found it: SOIC 8 -
STMicroelectronics ST25P05 / ST25P05V6.
I tried to use a SOIC clamp from the TL866A package while the BIOS chip was still soldered on the board.
Overcurrent protection kicked in. I knew this might happen. I could've tried to rewrite the BIOS with the card powerd-up but I feared I might damage the programmer. My instinct was telling me to try something else.
I found a site where it was
suggested to cut a pin from the soldered SOIC 8 BIOS chip, rewrite it and make a small solder bridge to rebuild the contact between the cut pin and the PCB pad afterwards . Because of the small area I needed to make the cut, the lack of suitable cutting tools and horror images with ripped pads that came into my mind, I said
F@CK IT! and I decided to remove the BIOS chip and do a proper job.
Like it was the case with the V4-L, I first tried to remove a SOIC 8 chip from a dead motherboard. The removal of the SOIC 8 chip was a breeze.
I did the procedure on the 9800 PRO. The removal, programming and soldering of the BIOS chip
went smoothly.
Regarding the programming of the BIOS chip I have a few thing to report. At a first
VERIFY the chip looked blank and I gave the
ERASE command and it completed successfully. I searched the internet for a BIOS file using the P/N number and I couldnt believe how difficult it was. Luckily TPU/TechPowerUp has a BIOS database for graphic cards. I can find BIOS files for cards older than 20 years and I cant find suitable ones for newer cards...
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/
Even with the help of TPU it was difficult to find a BIOS file for my model. In the end I reduced the search area to
R350 / SAMSUNG memory and the
stock frequencies for Ati 9800 PRO 256MB.
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios...&interface=AGP&memType=DDR&memSize=256&since=
As the card was most probably built by ATI I decided to use a stock image and I only found one.
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/23/ati-9800pro-256-samsung22-030404
NOTE. During the programming of the BIOS chip I sometimes received the error that
the chip isnt oriented correctly in the socket even if it was positioned correclty. This fact gave me food for thought that maybe the BIOS chip wasnt blank and the leftover solder on the tiny feet might've made that the chip didnt fit well in the socket of the adapter. But how did the VERFIFY and ERASE commands complete successfully?...
Lets return to the matter at hand.
I had the card ready and willing. The chances that it might work were pretty high.
Power-up....and.....NOTHING...no change... drat and double drat and even a triple drat...
Several days have passed.
I read many articles and internet pages. I searched high and low for other BIOS files but I couldnt find anything.
I found the P/N on a old russian site...
For a fact, the card didnt work from the start and maybe the BIOS chip wasnt to blame. I'm a little pissed that when I gave the ERASE command I didnt check to see if the BIOS chip sat perfectly in the socket. Maybe I could've recovered something from it..maybe the card had a bad flash and the chip was empty...assumptions... assumptions...
After a few more days of busting my brains I said STOP but I still tried one more thing. I read a few more reviews I decided to try another BIOS file, this time from GIGABYTE.
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/70/gigabyte-9800pro-256-samsung-030523
I removed the BIOS chip, etc etc etc...
Unfortunately no change.
At this moment
I SAID THAT'S ENOUGH! and I prepared the card for the final cleaning.
I used
isopropyl alcohol 99% but the dirt was stubborn and gave me the middle finger so I used
FAIRY and HOT water. And by HOT I MEAN REALLY HOT!
Finally I could see the RED FACTORY colour. F@CK YEAH! I LIKE IT!
After I used Fairy and water I also washed the card with isopropyl alcohol 99%.
FINAL RESULTS.
Yep
my ATI ordeals are kind of real
From the 8500, 9500 NP and 9800 PRO, only the humble 9500 NP is alive and kicking.
I wasnt expecting this. Even so the entire affair was a bitter pill to swallow...
The upside is that after this endeavour I still learned a lot of things. LIVE AND LEARN!
It is kind of scary how fast the information can disappear from the internet. In my attempts to recover the 9800 PRO the reviews were a valuable resource. Unfortunately on many occasions I was greeted by incomplete or blank pages, pictures that wouldnt't load, bad kinks, etc. We are speaking about a graphic card launched in 2003 and not in the 1990.
This is what it is and I cant change it
More to come.
gallery:
https://postimg.cc/gallery/190eaq02k/
gallery 2:
9800 PRO 256 
